Frank Bana - A distillation...

Our poem is a distillation
wrung from common and raw elements
unhusked grains of experience

drops for the journey's flask
caught from barely accessible slopes
of a deep desert well

sweet syrups tapped
from the surface of a long-lived tree
risen darkly from the hidden roots

poetry a hard-won slight reward
preserved, patrolled and guarded
once captured, always held

these works are power for their defenders
like a proof of science
which cannot be unfounded

I laboured most of my life
fifty years and maybe more to learn
to sift so lightly the dirt and stones

and urge to surface from the mass
one translucent gem or two
that could defy for us the vice of time.

Frank Bana

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